


Three (Two) Men And A Baby (8 Year Old Werewolf) (And Annie)

by sevensilvermagpies



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brooding, Families of Choice, Fluff, Gen, Hospital Setting, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Minor Injuries, in which george mitchell and annie almost steal a child, oh hoho yes its parenting time, takes place post ep4 but pre s1 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25433188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensilvermagpies/pseuds/sevensilvermagpies
Summary: “What are we going to do?”“I don't know... The kid’s not going to disappear overnight right? Best we can do is keep an eye on him till he leaves the hospital and then,” he gives a helpless sort of shrug, “we figure it out from there.”It’s been an exhausting full moon, and now Mitchell and George are halfway through the most exhausting shift of all time, so of course life decides to throw them a curveball in the shape of an newly infected werewolf in their ER. An newly infected child.
Relationships: John Mitchell & George Sands & Annie Sawyer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	Three (Two) Men And A Baby (8 Year Old Werewolf) (And Annie)

**Author's Note:**

> Look at me, back in my comfort zone: writing incredibly niche fics for small fandoms. 
> 
> Paz: I want to see the edgy vampire be a parent  
> Me: yessir right away sir

Being assigned to ER was simultaneously the best and worst part of this job; its constant activity was a welcome reprieve from the mind numbing repetitiveness of mopping stairwells or cleaning toilets, but by god the  _ blood _ . The stench of it was everywhere, sweet and sharp and way too fucking  _ tempting _ . It’s the day after the full moon and a night of worrying over George has him already on edge, not that he’d tell his friend that. But he’d made sure breakfast this morning was hot, and Annie’s multitudes of tea were all George’s favourite herbal blend.

The man in question is prattling on about something beside him with surprising energy but it fades into the background behind the sudden tang of wrongness which smacks his senses. Something smells...off? That in itself is strange, extreme smell is usually one of George's fun little quirks. And boy is Mitchell grateful because it means he is always willing to switch vomit cleaning for blood cleaning. But right now it's screaming at him, something...

There! Two paramedics swing round the corner with a bed, trying to push it and tend to the patient at the same time. Almost on instinct Mitchell grabs the edge of the bed, calling for George to help. The paramedic he takes over from shoots him a grateful look but keeps talking to what he now sees is a kid. A kid covered in blood from the waist down and mud from the waist up. Shit. Double shit. 

Eventually they find a space for the bed and park it there. A nurse pops up to clean up the kid, now they've bandaged up his leg. Her eyes say that if her hands were free she’d be shooing them away so they go.  A quick glance at the ward sign tells them what part of the hospital they’re in, and Mitchell rattles off the bed number to George, trusting in George's ability to memorise numbers on the fly, as they stomp back to where they abandoned their supplies. He makes sure to stay just ahead of George as they move through the busy corridor to avoid the comments he’s sure he wants to make about what they're gonna do. 

“What was that about?”

Oh here it comes. “We’ll have to keep an eye on him.” Behind him he can hear George blustering.

“I’m sure his parents are around somewhere, probably doing insane amounts of paperwork.” Fuck, how would you explain this to parents. For the first time he cursed taking a job most people overlooked, parents would trust a nurse or a doctor, but a porter? No chance. 

The thought stops him in his tracks and George takes the opportunity to swing him round to face him. “Why is the kid our problem? You don’t think it was one of your nasty little friends do you because I thought they usually went for the neck.”

“Oh come  _ on  _ George,” Had he really not clocked it, and thought Mitchell had dragged them halfway across the hospital with no warning on a whim? Actually that sounds like George, head in the sand and willfully blind to noticing others of their kind. Jesus. Flicking a quick look up and down the corridor, he pulled his friend into a thankfully empty stairwell. “He smelt just like you. Put two and two together and find four.” 

“Oh so I smell like mud, blood and bodily fluids do I Mitchell? Well thank you-” 

“No you idiot, you smell like wet dog.” 

“Wet dog?!” his voice pitches in indignation. “Very funny, very funny... wait,” his face drains to a colour closer to a sheet of paper than any skin tone, “Are you serious?” 

“As the grave.” Mitchell says with a rueful grin, rubbing a hand over his face in an unpleasant mix of frustration and fear. “That is one freshly appointed and very young werewolf.”

  
  
  


The rest of the shift drags, and although George wants to call a house meeting as soon as they’re all home they’re both dead on their feet and crash immediately. A night of broken sleep doesn’t stop Mitchell’s mind from whirring. It wasn’t that being a werewolf was better than being a vampire, but at least the kid would still be able to grow. In his time with Herrick he’d met vampires who were turned as children, though there were only a couple them as few survived the turn, and they were often the harshest - robbed of their adulthood as well as their humanity. 

He is glad for Annie’s tea making habit when the three of them gather round the kitchen table to discuss their latest furry problem, letting George explain what - or rather who - they had discovered whilst he stared into the swirling surface of his drink and tried desperately to come up with a better solution than child kidnapping. 

“Mitchell!” A hand on his shoulder jilted him out of his reverie, and he looked up into the shocked face of Annie. She looked like she was torn between crying and raging, pacing up and down the kitchen.

“If you’re quite finished having a staring competition with your tea - which will go cold if you don’t drink it - we have to  _ do _ something, I mean,” she hugged her arms around herself as if she could physically restrain her worry, “oh god a  _ child _ ?! We have to help!”

“There isn’t exactly a guidebook on these things y’know.” The look she shoots him tells him that perhaps that wasn’t the most helpful suggestion. “I’m just saying.”

She huffs, “well you’re no help. George come on, you’re our resident werewolf. Can’t you take him under your wing a bit, make him part of your-”

“If the next word out of your mouth is pack I’m going to hide all the teabags.” George cuts in, holding up a warning hand, “but I can’t just do that I mean, what about his family? You do remember what happened last time we semi-adopted a child right?” 

A gloomy silence blankets the kitchen. Mitchell is vaguely aware of Annie and George exchanging words over his head but it's almost as if he’s underwater. The image of Bernie floats into his mind, bright laughter turning sour and mocking as his face is overlaid with visions of twisted, hateful vampires. Would he turn into one of them? Of course he would, eventually. His mother might be able to control him for a while but would die, she was only mortal, or he would kill her. Then what. Only a prayer that he wouldn’t come looking for Mitchell and revenge, if there was any vampire able to push past the bond that tied them to their sire to kill them it would be a child. Perhaps it would be a mercy.

“Mitchell. Mitchell concentrate for god's sakes!” It was George this time, pulling him from the pit his thoughts had fallen in. Annie just gives him a smile and a fresh cup of tea, like she knows where he went.

“What are we going to  _ do _ ?” 

“I don't know... The kid’s not going to disappear overnight right? Best we can do is keep an eye on him till he leaves the hospital and then,” he gives a helpless sort of shrug, “we figure it out from there.” 

His disregard for the apparent urgency of the situation gains him two glares; one worried and one annoyed. All he can do is raise both hands in a placating gesture and try to reassure.

“It's a whole month till the next full moon. We have time.” He just hopes he sounds a lot more confident than he feels.

  
  
  


Next day at the hospital Mitchell takes his break earlier than he usually would, buys a hot chocolate with extra sugar alongside his coffee, and marches himself up to Pediatrics. The kid is, thankfully, exactly where they left him. His bedding is stark white, and someone has obviously managed to give him a bit of a bath, he looks a lot better. Trouble is the kid now looks tiny even in the smaller than normal hospital bed, curled up and staring listlessly at the wall. He paused just outside the entrance to the ward, suddenly unsure. Somehow he didn’t think just marching up and asking what had happened would fly anymore, the boy in the bed looked too fragile by half. 

The familiar, and unwelcome, sensation of being watched makes the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. He’d been noticed, and was being stared at with the same intensity that had previously been granted to the wall, if not more. Shit, time to pretend he had a plan all along.

“Hi.”

Silence. 

“I brought you hot chocolate.”

More silence. He holds the cup out towards the bed, but the kid doesn’t take it, leaving his hand stuck out awkwardly midair. 

“I saw you come in yesterday-”

“You pushed my cart.” 

And breathe a sigh of relief. The boy’s voice is rough, and a little reedy, but he seems sure enough of the situation that Mitchell takes a chance and moves closer, taking a seat on hard plastic, keeping an ear out for any signs of distress.

“Yeah I did, me and my friend George. Good on you for remembering.” He gets a shrug in response, words apparently a hard won prize. But he isn’t ready to give up yet. 

“You know they’ve labelled you a John Doe.” Another shrug, so he leans in closer like he’s telling a secret. Which, well, he supposes he is sort of. “My name’s John too, but everyone calls me Mitchell. I'm willing to bet your name isn't actually John though.” It doesn’t get him a reply, but he does get a small smile, and a small hand reaching out for the cup of hot chocolate. He’s going to count that as a fucking win.

  
  
  


He tries to head back every shift after that, George too; though he brings bribes in the form of puzzle magazines instead of sweets and bits of fruit from the hospital shop like Mitchell. That place is fucking overpriced. He’s half a mind to start bringing stuff from home if this goes on for much longer, it's only been three days and his wallet already hurts. The kid doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, Nina bending the rules of confidentiality to let them know that the hospital can't release him till they find his family, or a suitable placement. She even gives Mitchell an apologetic smile when she says it, which is nice, and offers to drop by to say hi to him herself.

For all their combined efforts though, their little friend remains John Doe. A voice in the back of his mind which sounds suspiciously like his mother starts thinking of him as Johnny-boy, and oh that drives him into a black cloud of guilt which frightens even George, until sometime on the fourth day he does it aloud and the kid seems to perk up. After that he wouldn’t dream of calling him anything else.

Before they know it, it’s been a week solid of Mitchell and George visiting before their shifts start, and on their breaks, and after they’re done, the two of them switching in and out who's on kid-watching duty. Then, when the shift pattern switches and they’re finally on a matching shift again there comes a breakthrough. 

It’s a Tuesday in October and suitably rainy, so they arrive soaked to the bone from the short dash between the car and the staff entrance. They race through drying off so they can pop in together to say hi - chocolate and crossword both at the ready. It takes all of about a minute of the two of them sitting either side of the bed for George to start trying to impart life advice using his housemate as a bad example. This time it’s about cleaning up after yourself and being “a functioning human being”, which has Mitchell scoffing at the insult, insisting that George was just stuck up and “you don't wanna be like that Johnny boy, you do what you want with your own space,” when suddenly the much desired words to are spoken, softly and hesitantly. 

“It’s Teddy.” 

George and Mitchell exchange a look of surprise across the bed. The boy seems to shrink back a little at their reaction, but repeats himself louder and more sure.

“My name. It’s Teddy. I’m Teddy.”

George is the first to get his mouth back in gear, straightening up and giving a comical little half bow. “Well, it’s lovely to meet you Teddy.” 

Mitchell simply grins, kicking his feet to rest on the bed and holding out a fist for Teddy to bump, which he does with glee. “Alright! Teddy it is.”  
  


After that it’s like a dam has broken; Teddy’s favourite colour is orange, he doesn’t like peas, and he doesn’t remember where his family are. Though he clams back up when they ask if they can tell Nina. He even admits that George’s crosswords are boring. Mitchell cheers at that one and sticks his tongue out in a taunt that Teddy immediately copies with a giggle, elated that he’d been proved right, even if it sets George off grumbling about immaturity and immortality. His smug mood is shot right through when he comes back from a hot chocolate run to find that Teddy is much more taken with Sudoku than crosswords, to George’s delight. 

He’s still a quiet kid. But then again, he’s sitting in a hospital after having a chunk taken out of his thigh by a werewolf, and his only visitors are two hospital porters. All things considered, he’s doing quite well. They still haven’t quite found their way to talking about the whole supernatural thing yet but it’s fine, they've got a few weeks to the full moon to figure it out. 

But for now there's something more pressing. They’ve just practically collapsed by Teddy’s bedside after a late night shift, shoving hospital shop sandwiches in their mouths as breakfast-dinner. Normally Teddy would be catching them up on what he’s got to do today, or quietly working on a puzzle from the new book he’d got, but today he’s staring at his hands twisted in the bedsheet with a thousand yard stare that no ten year old should have mastered. 

There’s an argument of increasingly raised eyebrows, till eventually Mitchell sighs and leans forwards a little to catch Teddy’s eye. “So what’s wrong?”

He gets a shrug, so reminiscent of their first conversation it just makes him sad. A pointed glance at George makes him swallow the last bite of sandwich and give it a try.

“If you don’t tell us, we don’t know how to fix it.”

There's a pause, then a quiet, “Promise?”

Both men nod quickly, the soft plea only worrying them further. Their eagerness to agree seems to bolster Teddy’s trust, and he begins to slowly tell them a story. How he had woken up in the middle of the night, and there had been a lady standing at the end of his bed. How she doesn't come every night but when she does she just stands there like a statue. How she was here last night and when he called out to her she disappeared before his eyes. As the story stretches out before them his voice gets sharper and faster, till he was stuttering and stumbling over his words. Eventually his words grind to a halt, and they both leap in to speak.

“What did she look like?” “Were you scared?”

Mitchell shot George a quick glare, before offering his hand out to Teddy. 

“It's ok to be scared you know but-" he is cut off with a quick shake of Teddy’s head and a small hand patting his own. 

“It wasn’t scary; she looked kind, and she smiled at me! But she looked sad, so I said hi but then she left and I don’t know where.”

  
  


“You went to the HOSPITAL?” The door slams behind them as the two men barrel through the door. “Annie you went to the hospital?!” 

The ghost near jumps from where she had been sat on the sofa, popping out of sight and reappearing in the kitchen doorway, visibly shook by George’s sudden loudness. “I just wanted to see Teddy! He sounded so sweet and I didn’t think he’d be able to see me and-”

Mitchell reaches forwards to pull George behind him and away from a shaky Annie, planting himself firmly between his two friends. “Alright!” He presses one hand firmly into George’s shoulder, pushing him towards the stairs, “time for bed, chop chop.” With a touch of enhanced strength he shoves the other man up the first few steps, “long shift, very stressed, bedtime,” and flatly ignores George's insistent demands that they need to talk about Teddy, till finally he disappears up the stairs. 

They both let out a soft sigh, though neither really need to breathe anymore, and look at each other for a long second. Finally Mitchell falls back heavily against the sofa, eyes falling shut, and aching with tiredness down to his bones, and mutters, “you know Teddy wasn’t scared of you.”

He can’t hear Annie move, but the next time she speaks she’s closer. Almost next to him, and it's at times like this he wishes desperately she was material and warm where she pressed up against his arm. 

“I’m glad. I didn’t want to scare him.” 

He doesn’t bother opening his eyes, just reaches out beside him and patting the air vaguely where her leg should be. “He said...” and he definitely doesn't want his eyes open for the next bit of conversation, needs something to hang as a veil between himself and the emotions of others. “He thought you looked sad.”

Annie coughs a little in embarrassment, but she doesn’t deny it, just takes a moment to gather herself before speaking. “Me and Owen... when I was alive we, well mostly me, always wanted children. It was something I thought I’d lost when, y’know.” She gives a self deprecating laugh. “It doesn’t matter now.”

It does, Mitchell wants to protest. But it wouldn’t be helpful, and he knows when to keep his mouth closed, so he just sinks further into the sofa, kicking his feet up on the low table. 

“We’ll just have to chaperone you next time.” The happy squeal in response is enough for him to crack an eye open, grinning softly at her delighted face. “We’ll all go together; you, me and George.” Then a strike of inspiration hits his exhausted brain. “After all, if he’s cool with ghosts I’m sure vampires and werewolves won’t be too much of a leap.” 

He drifts off to the soothing sound of Annie’s excited chatter, and the relief of knowing how to start helping Teddy. It’s the best sleep he’s had in 100 years.

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for Paz, who sparked the idea in a chat and kindly edited the results.


End file.
